A Mansfield couple, Gareth and Catherine Bull, who scooped a huge jackpot of
nearly £41 million from last week's EuroMillions draw were forced to put on
hold their celebrations while they took their children to football.

The couple said they had to place the win in the back of their minds after they found out on Saturday due to their full social calendar.

The pair, who banked the rollover jackpot of £40,627,24, said they had to ignore their win because they had to take their children to football, had a kids' sleepover planned and were entertaining friends that night.

Mr and Mrs Bull were unveiled as the new millionaires at a press conference at Eastwood Hall in Nottingham on Tuesday afternoon.

The couple said they have not yet told their sons, who are aged nine and 10, about the win but would do later after they finish school.

Mr Bull, a 40 year-old self-employed builder, admitted he had bought his ticket on a whim when he could not start a building job because of the weather as he did not want to get rained on.

He drove with the ''lads'' in his work van to a shop he had never been in before and bought a Lucky Dip ticket.

Mr Bull checked his EuroMillions ticket as usual on TV on Saturday morning and said he knew he had the two Lucky Star numbers because they immediately jumped out at him but it very quickly dawned on him he had more numbers than he thought.

Mrs Bull, 35, who works in health insurance, told reporters that her husband had started shaking.

''He came into the bedroom as white as a sheet, the ticket was shaking in his hand and I knew that something wasn't right," she said.

''When he tried to explain that he thought we'd won I thought he was pulling my leg.

''I was in the middle of straightening my hair and told him I wasn't very happy with being teased.''

The couple told their two sons to get ready for their football match so they could call Camelot, which confirmed how much their winning ticket was actually worth.

Mr Bull said: "All of this has happened at a crazy fast speed since Saturday and it is hard to keep up.

"We have our dream home which we built from scratch and it is impossible to think about what we are going to do next yet.

"We have only told a few people so far so it will be exciting to sit down together as a family and work out plans for the future."

Mrs Bull, wearing a knee-length purple dress, and Mr Bull, in a white shirt and jeans, laughed and smiled for photographers as they arrived for their press conference this afternoon and posed with their mammoth cheque.

Mrs Bull said that even though their winning numbers were shown on television she had to go online to double check.

She added: ''My head was in bits and I thought from the numbers matched we had won £4k, then I thought it was £40k - but the zeros and commas were all in the wrong place and we couldn't work it out.

''At one point we thought it was as much as £4 million but we couldn't see straight and it didn't seem real.''

Mr Bull said top of his shopping list is a box at his beloved Manchester United followed by a Range Rover Sport, a villa somewhere and a trip to Disney in Florida for the children.

Mrs Bull said she might not be changing her routine but would love to get a new upstairs landing carpet and to be able to have her hair done more than twice a year.

The first thing they bought was an iPad that they had been saving up for but have not yet even had chance to switch on.

They would want to support charities with their new-found millions, particularly breast cancer charities after Mr Bull's mother suffered with the disease around five years ago and has since recovered.

Mr and Mrs Bull said they still had some unchecked scratch cards at home but had not yet looked to see if they were winners.

Asked if they thought the win would change them, Mrs Bull said: "I hope not. It can't. Everything has to change then so no, it can't."

They said they simply hoped the win would help them continue being healthy and happy.